The Documents.
Read Them Yourself.

Effective May 1, 2026; expires April 30, 2031. Contains the outfall descriptions, effluent limitations, monitoring requirements, industrial pretreatment program references, and the fact sheet describing how the permit was developed. Permit writer: Evan Walters. Signed by Deputy Regional Permit Administrator Trendon Choe.

Two hundred pages of comments and DEC responses, including submissions from the Onondaga Nation, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Sierra Club CNY, Clean Water Action, the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, CHIPS Communities United, and individual residents. This is the record of what the public asked for and what DEC chose to change — or not change. Authored by Alison Wasserbauer.

DEC’s written determination under the State Environmental Quality Review Act that the project’s environmental impacts have been avoided or mitigated to the maximum extent practicable. Includes findings on wetlands, surface water, stormwater, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and cumulative impacts with the Micron campus. Signed by Regional Permit Administrator Kevin M. Balduzzi.

Five pages. DEC’s formal finding that issuing the Oak Orchard permit would be inconsistent with attainment of statewide greenhouse gas emission reductions under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The document then justifies issuance on the basis that the project serves the Micron facility, which “directly and materially serves national security interests” under the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2021.

213 pages. Prepared by Brown and Caldwell, subconsultant to EDR and Critical Path Engineering Solutions, for the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection. Signed by Matthew John Marko, PE, NY License 76324, under the Professional Engineer seal of the State of New York. Contains the full alternatives analysis (11 alternatives considered, Alternatives 10 and 11 selected), the FAB1 and FAB2 mass balances, and — on page 164 — the table of Projected Water Quality Based Effluent Limits for the Oneida River discharge. The PFOS line item in that table reads 1,136 µg/L. That is 284,000 times the federal EPA drinking water MCL of 4.0 ng/L. The entire treatment plan for PFAS, on page 1-9, begins with “Micron stated during the workshops” and concludes that PFAS “can be removed in the biological treatment.” Biological treatment has never destroyed PFAS.

The document is stamped “CONFIDENTIAL — Exempt from FOIL per POL 87(2)(c)&(d)” on the first page of the Executive Summary and the first page of Section 3. Public Officers Law §87(2)(c) is the trade-secrets exemption; §87(2)(d) is the exemption for records whose disclosure would impair an imminent contract award. The County is asserting this document is legally shielded from FOIL requests — twice over. The same County has hosted the file on its public web server, at static.ongov.net/WEP/OakOrchard_WWTP/permitting/SPDES/Engineering-Reports/, since November 2025. As of April 22, 2026, the URL is still live, indexed by search engines, and linked from the County’s own Public Review Documents page.

Four pages. NYSDEC’s first formal Request for Additional Information after reviewing the County’s August 28, 2025 resubmission. Comment #2 directly asks: “Has OCDWEP evaluated installing MBRs with nanofiltration capabilities and/or reverse osmosis treatment to remove these pollutants to levels recommended by the NYSDOH?” Cc’d to Carol Lamb-Lafay (Director, Division of Water), Brown and Caldwell, and Carollo Engineers. Signed by Trendon Choe, Deputy Regional Permit Administrator, Region 7.

Eight pages. Carollo Engineers’ written response to NYSDEC’s first RFAI on behalf of OCDWEP. The PFAS response (Comment #2) contains the engineer’s on-the-record admission about the County’s biosolids strategy: “There is research indicating that dried Biosolids may have less of some PFAS than the feed sludge, but it’s likely just through transformation of one PFAS to another in the exhaust or condensate streams. We are not suggesting that drying destroys PFAS.” The response further states the County will rely on a 10 ng/L SPDES action level for PFOA/PFOS only, and will “look upstream to source control” if exceeded.

Three pages. NYSDEC’s second formal RFAI. On the PFAS question, DEC explicitly directs the County to address how PFAS will be handled in the Industrial Wastewater Discharge Permit (IWDP) the County will issue to Micron, and to discuss “proposed measures by the industry including any source separation, and technological treatment measures such as nanofiltration, GAC, ion exchange, and foam fractionation.” The Department was, on the record, asking the County to characterize Micron’s PFAS treatment technology before the SPDES permit could be considered complete. Cc’d to Carol Lamb-Lafay.

Three pages. Carollo Engineers’ written response to NYSDEC’s second RFAI. The PFAS response acknowledges the County’s plan to issue an IWDP to Micron “consistent with the USEPA-approved pretreatment program and the requirements of the Oak Orchard WWTP SPDES permit for PFAS,” and concludes with the statement at the center of the campaign’s argument: “Development of local limits for the ITT and MTT were not identified as a critical path issue for issuance of the SPDES permit. Though the County has made significant progress on these, the IWDP was not identified as a critical path related to the issuance of a SPDES permit. The bulk of the information requested will be made available in the coming months as the ITT/IWDP development proceeds.” NYSDEC signed the permit five months later on April 10, 2026.